Mom-of-5, building a home in California, step by step, with Faith and Feistiness ~ by General Mom Contractor

Custom Access Panel Magazine Rack

by generalmom

General Mom is still cooking up projects on the house! Sometimes it takes sheer frustration of a project not being done, to have the motivation to complete it! Truth?

Since our master shower has a steam unit, it also must have an access panel (for service and power which I hope we never have to deal with). Nonetheless, we hid the steam unit, which is as big as a computer server, during construction in a sneaky little spot on an outside wall where the roof meets in the toilet area. If you want a steam unit, you have to plan for this space carefully since its big. Locating it in the bottom of a linen closet would be my first choice.

We looked at this makeshift piece of drywall for over a year and we were tired of looking at it.

We thought of the typical ways of covering it up with a small door, but it was a perfect opportunity for something custom and useful. So, I gave the engineer hubs all my Pinterest ideas of making it a magazine holder like this one below.

Trick was to make it removable for access. So, he came up with an ingenious solution of using spring clips on all four corners of the panel so it snaps into place and comes off easily. Awesome!

The hubs then designed a wood frame and made low profile rails to hold the magazines. I wasn’t planning on having a library in there!

I primed and painted it with the same semigloss as the base trim. And now we have the cutest access panel, if I do say so myself!